The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Third Session Fortieth Congress; Together with an Appendix, Comprising the Laws Passed at that Session Page: 1,540
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THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
February ,24,
JUr.^I^LXS.ttN- .1 move to aid to the pr.o-
the purpose of securing the services of this Spe-
cial Commissioner of the Revenue during most
oi.the next fiscal year. It ia well understood
by geatlemeo of the House that it is necessary
to amend both the internal revenue laws now
upon the statute-book, and also to make a
thorough revision of the tariff laws.
Mr. MOORHEAD. I rise to a question of
order. Jf I understand the amendment aright
it. provides that no portion of the money shall
be paid after the 1st of June, 1870. My question
of order is that this appropriation is from the
1st of Jan e, 1869, to the 1st of June, 1870, and
the jjrovision which he makes would be after
the time of this appropriation entirely, and
therefore it is not in order in this bill.
The CHAIRMAN. The Chair overrules the
point of order.' It is for the House to determ-
ine whether it is expedient to do that which
would seem 1 o be inconsistent.
Mr. ALLISON. I would remind my friend
that the fiscal year ends the 30th of June, and
not on the 1st of June. I supposed he was
aware of that. It seems he is not. Now, my
object is to secure the service of this' Special
Commissioner for the most part of this year,
and I desire now to say a word with reference
to the past services of this Commissioner in
reply to what was said by the gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Sir. Moorhead] last evening.
I understood him to hold this man responsible
for the failure of what was known as the large
tariff bill in the Thirty-Ninth Congress. I think
he does that gentleman entirely too much credit
when he attributes the failure of that bill to his
efforts. I remember distinctly the failure of
that bill, and if it is to be charged to anybody
it should lie at the door of the distinguished
gentleman fiom Pennsylvania himself. That
bill went from the House of Representatives
during the first session of the Thirty-Ninth
Congrevi, was reported early in the second
session to the Senate, and passed that body, I
think, before the middle of January. It came
back to this House, and because the gentleman
from Pennsylvania insisted that it should goto
the Committee of Ways and Means and not be
acted upon in the House, it went to that com-
mittee and remained there for more than three
weeks for the purpose of receiving amendments
from gentlemen on that committee, chiefly in-
Creasing the duty on iron and steel upon those
fixedby 'tbe amendments ofthe Senate. So that
if any one^is to be charged with the responsibility
of the failure of that bill it is the gentlemen
who are not satisfied with the increase made by
the Senate upon the existing tariff on manu-
factured iron and steel, but desired that the
duty should be greatly increased beyond what
tile Senate proposed.
Now, sir, I did not wish to allude to the
history of that tariff bill, but I assert here that
it was not the fault ofthe Special Commissioner
of the Revenue that it did not finally pass, and
I appeal to gentlemen here who desire a fair
revision of the tariff, whether in the interest
of protection, so called, or whether in favor of
moderate protection, or in favor of a tariff for
revenue, not to strike down on the 1st day of
Junejnext an officer and an office which is of
vast value to the people ofthis country. I call
ujpion thegentlemen who intend to vote against
this Special Commissioner of the Revenue to re-
member that we are about to have a change of
administration, and is it possible that a major-
ity ofthis House, having faith in the incoming
President, believe that if we now have an officer
who ^is unfit for the discharge of his duties
the President will not remove him and putin
his place'.another man capable of discharging
the important duties that we have imposed
upon him by law? Therefore I trust we will
at least continue the appropriation for eleven
months of the next fiscal year.
Mr. MOORHEAD. I rise to oppose the
amendment. I think we had a very fair expres-
sion of opinion on thissubject last night, and
X' was in hopes the gentleman would haye sym-
pathy enoiigh for his friend not to attempt to
drag him before the House again; but as he
has trotted him out, I hope the House will
stand by what they have done. I did charge, and
I reiterate it, that the defeat of the tariff bill
was owing to the manipulations of this Special
Commissioner. I charged it, as I thought,
with full knowledge of the fact. Now, when
the gentleman undertakes to make this House
believe that I was the cause of the defeat of
that bill I do not think it necessary to make
any reply to that. I believe I am understood
on that subject in this House and in the coun-
try, so that it is entirely unnecessary to defend
myself against any snch charge as that.
Mr. ALLISON. If the gentleman will allow
me, I did not mean to say he intentionally
defeated it. I only meant thjit he insisted on
amendments which made it fail for want of
time.
Mr. MOORHEAD. I understood perfectly
what the gentleman meant. I said last night,
and I say now, that the tariff bill was defeated
by offering a substitute in the Senate which this
Special Commissionier had prepared and which
the Senate Committee on Finance adopted.
That put so much into the bill, or rather made
an entirely new bill of such length, that there
was not time to pass it; so it failed for want
of time, as a good many of our bills in the
Committee of Ways and Means have done.
I repeat, as the gentleman has brought his
friend before the House again, that I do not
think we have any use for such an officer, and
I hope some gentleman will .relieve me from
the necessity of offering a bill to abolish the
office, which I shall feel bound to do if no one
else offers it before this Congress closes.
We have our Secretaries, who are the official
agents of the President, and they make their
official reports to CoDgress. Now, we do not
want a subordinate officer to give his opinions
and his views and to prepare bills for Congress.
If this gentleman were suffered to go on for a
few years in the way he has been running for
some time past, and with such elegant gentle-
men to back him as he has had here, I do not
know but what he might do the whole busi-
ness. I do not know but what we might dis-
pense with Congress altogether, and even with
the Cabinet officers and the President also. I
do notknow but thisgentleman might be looked
to to run the whole machine. If the power
was given to him, if we put him in the place of
the Secretary of the Treasury, or even of Gen-
eral Grant himself, he might run the whole
machine without assistance, and he would look
upon Congress as a trammel in his way.
Now, I do not think that this gentleman is so
valuable to Congress and to the country as to
justify our continuing his salary any longer.
That was my opinion last night when I offered
my amendment, and 1 intend to follow it up,
if no other gentleman does, with a bill to abol-
ish the office.
[Here the hammer fell.]
Mr. KELLEY. I move to amend the amend-
ment by striking out '' 1st of June, 1870" and
inserting in lieu thereof the words "30th of
May, 1869." I make this motion because I
agree in some points with the gentleman from
Iowa, [Mr. Allison.] I think that the tariff
law and the internal revenue law both need
general revision. And I think that Congress
should have a fair chance to get at the facts on
which to legislate, and not be put in the posi-
tion of relying upon the reports of a man who
in his last report has falsified nearly all the
facts he pretended to submit.
I have shown you that he has pointed out as
a season of prosperity a period when labor was
out of employment and the deposits in savings-
banks were running down rapidly. I have
shown you that he points out as a season ruin-
ous to the labor of the country a period when
labor is fully and profitably employed, and
when the laboring people in four States and
two cities added in one little year over twenty
million dollars to their deposits in the savings-
banks. I have shown you his demonstration
that the wealth of the country is at least
$32,000,000,000, and y,et I hold in my hand,
his subsequent official report announcing to
Congress that the wealth of the country is but
$20,000,000,000, and asking it to rudely eon-
tract the currency to accord with his newly '
conceived dimensions of the wealth of ;the
country. I have shown you—I did it last night—
the suppression on the part of Mr. Wells oMie
most remarkable development of material re-
sources and motive-power that the world has
ever seen: the recent development of the
bituminous coal-fields of this country, thesub-
stitution of coal for wood over hundreds of
thousands of miles of territory, and ofthe steam-
engine for muscular power over the same broad
stretch of territory. These important facts are
carefully concealed and buried in a parenthet-
ical clause which contains a misstatement as
ponderous as was ever made in such a clause,
that the whole extent of the development of
the bituminous coal fields and the consequent
increase of productive motive-power of this
country has been but eight per cent, in three
years. That is his statement, while, as I have
shown you, the facts are that in Kansas it has
been eight thousand per cent.; in Missouri,
Illinois, Indiana, it has been in each more
than eight hundred per cent.; and taking all
the coal-bearing regions of the country into
consideration, the increase has not been less
than seven hundred per cent.
Now, sir, these perversions and suppression
of significant facts cannot in my judgment be
the result of mere confusion, but are the' result
of design. They are perpetrated because we
have a Commissioner who has preconceived
notions that he is determined to force upon
Congress, and when he finds facts which do not
sustain them, like the French philosopher he
thinks it so much the worse for the facts, and
sets them aside as not worthy of consideration.
We should not pay a man to mislead and de-
ceive us. If we want facts relative to revenue
gathered and collated for us let us divide the
money now paid Mr. Wells between Robert J.
Walker, the great champion of free trade, and
Henry C. Cary, the ablest expouuder of the
value of protection to the wages of American
laborers, and let each give us honestly the facts
that sustain his theoiy, and we will get the in-
formation we need. But do not let us pay the
salary and traveling expenses and furnish clerks
for a man whose sole business seems to be to
deceive and delude those who are engaged in
making laws for the country. I hope the
amendment adopted last night will not be mod-
ified
[Here the hammer fell.]
Mr. PIKE. Mr. Chairman, when the pro-
vision for the appointment of this Special Com-
missioner of the Revenue was first adopted it
struck ineasan incongruity. I thought that the
existing offices of Secretary of the Treasury and
Commissioner of Internal Revenue provided
ample means for gathering and collecting the
necessary facts for the action of Congress. Bat
I must say that the manner in which Mr. Wells
has discharged liis duties has inclined me very
strongly to the opinion that it was wise in Con-
gress to establish this office, and very wise in the
appointing power to select Mr. W ells todischarge
its duties. Mr. Wells has had the mii-fortune to
ascertain, in the course of his investigations,
that the duty upon pig iron is very high. In his
various investigations in relation to this sub-
ject he has ascertained that the manufacture
of pig iron costs some twenty-three dollars a
ton, while it usually sells, I think, for a,bout
forty dollars a ton, making a very respectable
margin of some seventeen dollars a ton. As
the duty on imported pig-iron is nine dollars in
gold per ton, and as from time to tiiae this
suffering interest has clamored very much on
the ground of want of protection, the* facts
exhibited in Mr. Wells's report are of course
offensive to gentlemen engaged in that branch
of trade. A profit of seventeen dollars per ton
on pig-iron which costs twenty-three dollars per
ton is, of course, not sufficient.,
Mr. GRIS WOLD. Will the gentleman yield
for a question?
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United States. Congress. The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Third Session Fortieth Congress; Together with an Appendix, Comprising the Laws Passed at that Session, book, 1869; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30881/m1/40/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.